My experience as an English teacher in Daegu, South Korea

Cooking 101

Since I moved to Korea, I haven’t cooked at home very much since I have a hard time planning my meals in advance. And sometimes the food I buy ends up going bad before I have a chance to use it. It’s relatively cheap to eat out, anyway. But, I won’t be discouraged! I’m not very good at cooking anything, really, but I have this enthusiastic desire to learn how to cook Korean dishes.

Future dream

I found a website called Maangchi that has easy to follow recipes for a variety of Korean dishes. The lady who runs the website seems so sweet ^^! She posts videos showing how to make each dish. There are lots of pictures too. Very useful for anyone interested in learning how to make Korean food at home. Though some of the ingredients may be hard to find.

So far, I’ve only made super simple, non-meat dishes since I haven’t tried to buy meat yet since I’ve been here lol. I just uhh don’t know how to buy it from a butcher.. I’m used to buying meat pre-packed and clearly priced :(. It doesn’t help that I won’t know how to tell the butcher what kind of meat I want and how much. Pathetic, I know. But, I’ll get over this stupid fear I have of buying meat soon. I want to make more stuff at home!

I’ve made:

된장찌개 Beanpaste Stew

김치전 Kimchi Pancake

김치볶음밥 Kimchi Fried Rice

두부부침양념장 Fried Tofu in spicy sauce

계란 말이 Rolled Omelet

계란 찜 Steamed Egg

These dishes are easier to make than they seem. It’s just a little bit hard to get the flavor right the first time. Sometimes, I don’t follow the recipe exactly. For example, I used Bisquik instead of flour to make the kimchi pancake so it turned out a little fluffy haha.

😥

I’m trying really hard to work on my cooking skills so that I can host really awesome dinner parties in the future! But, really I just want to know how to feed myself so I don’t have to eat out all the time. It’s also really satisfying to eat a meal that I made myself :D!